I will not give my power away
It is my happiness, mine
I create it, not you; I decide to be, not you
You can come into my happiness
But you cannot create it or destroy it
You can only enlarge it
Love and laughter are the elements we need in order to build and hold our lives together. Love makes up the bricks that we build our lives with, but what holds those bricks together? For that we need mortar, and the mortar of life is humor. I mean a childlike humor that isn’t offensive and doesn’t hurt anyone. The effect humor has had on my family and marriage has shown me that it’s a vital force, one that enables us to create healthy relationships with other living things.
You might be asking yourself: what has laughter got to do with the art of healing? Laughter may be one of the purest of the healing arts. What I am telling you is that laughter is one of the best therapeutic activities Mother Nature provides us with, and it doesn’t cost a cent. True laughter is an outburst or expression of breath that involves the vocal cords and comes from deep in the belly. It’s caused by an irresistible urge to express surprise, mirth, joy, and delight. Laughter stimulates the release of endorphins, a group of brain chemicals mentioned in an earlier chapter. These chemicals flood the body with a feel-good sensation that reaches every cell, delivering a message that says: Life is worth living, so do everything you can to survive.
Unlike the days when I was training as a physician, today we have studies documenting that cancer patients who laughed or practiced induced laughter several times a day lived longer than a control group who did not. Even so, in medical school doctors still aren’t taught the value of laughter as therapy. I certainly wasn’t in medical school; my patients were my teachers. They, the natives, taught me, the tourist.
I recall one day walking into the room of a patient, a lovely woman that I cared about, and she was dealing with a serious illness and several associated complications. I approached her room thinking about how I was going to help her and worrying about her treatment. When I entered her room she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Why are you asking me that?” I responded.
“Your face and forehead are all wrinkled.”
“I am thinking about how to help you.”
“Think in the hallway, then,” she said. “I need you to smile when you come in here.” She was right. I needed an attitude adjustment to be a better physician for her, and it was an adjustment I happily made. The best doctors learn from the critiques and coaching supplied by their patients, nurses, and families. I learned from all of these people that when I lightened up, encouraged laughter in others, and practiced it myself, everybody benefited.
One good example of laughter changing a tense situation is illustrated by an anxious woman who was afraid to have surgery. I had spent almost an hour trying to calm her down in the hallway outside the operating room, until finally realizing that nothing I said was helping her. So we wheeled her into the OR, and in her panic she blurted out, “Thank God all these wonderful people are going to be taking care of me.”
I knew if I agreed with her it wouldn’t help. So, loudly enough for everyone to hear, I said, “I know these people. I have worked with them for years, and they are not wonderful people.” There were two seconds of bewildered looks, and then she and everyone in the room burst out laughing; we all became family and she did beautifully.
Another experience that convinced me about the value of humor occurred when my wife and I were out lecturing. Bobbie used to do a stand-up comedy act delivering one-liners as part of the presentation. This was a sort of intermission that gave people a break from the lecture. Instead of listening to more of my stories about exceptional-patient behavior, they got a chance to experience some of our group therapy methods.
When I introduced Bobbie, I would say, “Here’s my wife, Bobbie; she’s like a female Henny Youngman, and we have had thirty-eight wonderful years of married life.” The women would all smile at me until I concluded with, “and thirty-eight out of fifty-six isn’t too bad.” Then their expressions would change, and moments later the first laughter would erupt.
Usually when Bobbie did her routine, I would take her seat in the audience and enjoy the show. One time, however, there was a place for me to sit at the back of the stage, so I was able to observe the audience. The change in their physical appearance after laughing for fifteen to twenty minutes was striking and made me a firm believer in the benefits of humor. They looked so much healthier! Their eyes shone, and their postures were open and relaxed. Bobbie often ended her routine with the statement “He who laughs, lasts.” And her final piece of advice was: Laughter is contagious, so be a carrier.
After witnessing the remarkable change in that audience, I always made it a point to discuss the benefits of laughter before Bobbie did her routine, so people would be aware of how they were changed physically by the experience. And you know what? Bobbie always received more thank-yous at the end of the evening than I did.
I recommend that you use spontaneous laughter and maintain a childlike sense of humor throughout your day. When I talk about childlike humor, it’s about seeing the world through a child’s eyes. For example, if you see a sign that says, wet floor, go ahead and do it. When the instructions at the front desk say, “Sign In Upon Entering,” sign the register using those words: In Upon Entering. This can lead to a long wait, but it’s fun. When a form says, “Print Your Name,” print: “your name” in bold letters. When the sign says, nobody allowed here, go in, and when they shout at you to get out of there, tell them, “I’m a nobody. I can go in.” Most of the time the guards let you go, thinking if you’re that stupid, you’re no danger. Once when I did that, a guard stepped in front of me and said, “I’m making you a Somebody. You have to leave now.” The guard’s inner child had appeared, and so I gave him a hug.
When a radio interviewer asked me how I managed to be happy during these difficult and challenging times, I told her, “I have learned that you must always finish everything you begin. So before I leave home in the morning, the first thing I do is finish all the red and white wine, the kahlua, Prozac, and Valium in the house. By the time I go out the door, I feel really happy.” There was a pause before she started to giggle. She got it — one of the best ways to be happy, especially when everything is collapsing around you, is just to laugh.
In Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, Norman Cousins wrote a fascinating account of his self-induced healing-by-laughter from a diagnosed condition, ankylosing spondylitis. When his doctor gave him a one-in-five-hundred chance of recovery, Cousins checked himself into a hotel, watched Candid Camera tapes, and laughed, day after day.1 Choosing to use humor as his medicine, rather than react to his fear and do nothing, is the sign of an optimist — a survivor.
The opposite of optimism (a sign of happiness) is negativity (a lack of hope and the unawareness of potential). Negativity is an attitude that stems from fear: “Oh no, this is going to happen; that’s going to happen.” How can you be happy when you’re afraid, when the first thought in your mind is the worst-case scenario?
Fear is meant to help you save your life. If you are walking in the woods and you see a snake that might be poisonous, then fear is an appropriate reaction. You’ll jump back instinctively. I had that happen the other day while riding my bike through the woods. I thought I saw something that looked like a coyote or a wolf, and I swerved the bike without even thinking. Then I realized it was only a branch with a shadow, but it looked just like an animal ready to attack. What amazed me was that I had already changed the direction of my bike before my brain had had time to say, “It’s okay, it’s just a shadow.”
Fear is appropriate when a snarling dog lunges at you with teeth bared. Your heart rate increases and, with a rush of adrenaline, you find the strength to climb a tree that previously you couldn’t climb. But if you live in a constant state of fear, it is as if you are walking in the woods where everything around you is a poisonous snake or a rabid dog. Your body is constantly being pumped with stress chemicals that wear you down. It cannot repair itself when it’s putting all that energy into the fight-or-flight response, the automatic reaction of self-preservation. When you live in constant or chronic fear, your immune system becomes weakened as levels of stress hormones go up, causing increased blood sugar and inflammation of the circulatory system.
Patients sometimes reveal hidden fears in their drawings about family situations, their disease, or their treatment. These fears will not be expressed verbally during a visit to the doctor, so he can do nothing to help the patient through them. If you can get the patient to talk about this fear via their drawing, and turn it around so that they can see the humorous side of their situation and laugh about it, the laughter will beneficially affect their treatment and recovery outcome. (See my commentary on fig. 47 in chapter 6.)
If you live with thoughts of love and engage in daily laughter, the opposite of what you worried about happens. It is nearly impossible to live in fear when you laugh, and when you laugh every day your outlook changes. How can this be? You come to realize that you control two things: your thoughts and behaviors. Happiness is not a place you arrive at or an award you receive; it is something you practice, and in the practicing you become happy as a result of your attitude, thoughts, and behavior.
Think of yourself as an actor; rehearse until you are happy with your performance. Even when acting, an actor’s body chemistry is altered by the emotions related to the role she is playing, whether it is a comedy or tragedy.
Ingrid Bergman told a funny story about working with Alfred Hitch-cock. She was supposed to play an emotional scene in the film, and each time she tried she couldn’t feel the part. Confessing to Hitchcock that she didn’t think she could give that kind of emotion, the straight-faced director looked at the actress and said, “Ingrid, fake it.”2
This does not mean you should pretend you aren’t sad when, say, your dog dies. Negative emotions as reactions to life challenges are normal, but when you use them to give yourself permission to hang on to fear or to wallow in sad, dark thoughts, they become destructive. It is normal to grieve over the dog, or to cry when your knee is scraped after skidding off your bike, but once the flow of tears has run its course, find something funny about the situation and start laughing. Roll in it; love it; let tears of laughter wash the negative emotions away and the healing process begins.
Scientists have studied the effects of laughter on the body and identified a number of physiological benefits. Laughter increases activity in the immune system, giving “good” killer cells a boost, especially in their ability to target viruses, some tumors, and cancer cells. Measurements of immune system components show a lingering beneficial effect from laughter that lasts into the next day. Laughter appears to fight infection and abrasion or chemical insults to the upper tract of the respiratory system. Laughter is a natural muscle-relaxant; at the same time, it provides a good cardiac and diaphragm workout, improving the body’s capacity to use oxygen. This makes it an ideal activity for those whose ability to exercise is limited. Laughter also improves mood and decreases patients’ perception or awareness of pain. As in the case of appropriate exercise, there are no negative side effects to laughter.
Many years ago I fell off our roof when the top rung of a ladder I was climbing broke. When I told this story to an audience, I said, “I must have an angel, because I landed on my feet. Considering the angle of the ladder, landing on my feet seemed impossible.” At the end of my talk, a man came up to me and said, “You do have an angel, and I know his name.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“What did you say when the ladder broke?”
“Oh, shit.”
“That’s your angel’s name,” he said.
I laughed, not realizing at the time the gift he gave me. Now, whenever I get into a difficult situation and yell out, “Oh, shit,” I start laughing because I know help is on the way. Feel free to make use of my guardian angel whenever you are in need. That man from the audience has helped me get through many things, including the time I hit a sheet of ice while on my bike and flew into the air, only to yell, “Oh, shit!” When I hit the ground laughing, I was completely relaxed and, consequently, sustained no injuries.
Laughter yoga is a form of exercise that incorporates breathing and laughter without the use of jokes or comedy movies. It is based on the premise that the body does not recognize the difference between spontaneous and forced laughter, and that the beneficial effects are the same. Fifteen minutes of belly laughter is reported to be the minimum time required to get the best physiological results. Natural laughter usually lasts for a few seconds, but laughter yoga exercises keep the laughter flowing for as long as the person wishes.
Laughter yoga is similar to the Zen Buddhism practice of forced laughter. Some participants may find it awkward at first, but the faked laughter soon becomes genuine, and the phrase “Fake it till you make it” could easily be applied to laughter yoga. I have done these exercises and found it very hard to stop laughing even when there was no reason to laugh.
Try this in front of the mirror or while facing a friend: Raise your eyebrows, take a deep breath, and chant the meditation sound Ohm for three seconds. Then relax your eyebrows, smile, and make as many hee, hee, hee sounds as you can until you have expelled all of your breath. While faking the laughter, make sure to keep a big smile on your face, even if it feels like a grimace. Take another deep breath, raise your eyebrows, and chant Ohm for three seconds. Then relax your eyebrows, smile, and chant Ha, ha, ha until your breath is used up.
Do this several times, switching between sounds and allowing any natural laughter that bubbles up to take over and replace the fake laughter. Even if natural laughter doesn’t happen, do the exercise for fifteen minutes. Notice how you feel when you’re finished.
Senior centers and nursing homes that facilitate laughter classes have reported that residents enjoy the sessions and ask for more. They forget their aches and pains, and people report a lift in their overall mood during and after the sessions and up to twenty-four hours later.
I suggest that when you are ready to die, have your family tell stories about your life as they sit with you. My father literally died laughing as my mother told wonderful stories about their early relationship. Dad was tired of his body and had told Mom, “I need to get out of here.” She was able to let go of him and knew he was going to die that day. We were called to come. I went out to exercise before we left home, and I heard a voice ask, “How did your parents meet?” I answered that I didn’t know, and the voice said, “Then ask your mother when you get to the hospital.”
Several hours later, when we walked into Dad’s hospital room, the inner voice reminded me to ask the question, so I said, “How did you two meet?”
Mom described how she was on a vacation and had been sitting on the beach with girls she didn’t know, girls who, she later learned, had a very bad reputation. Some boys came walking down the beach, and they flipped coins to see who would get which girl. Then she told us, “Your father lost and got me.”
On their second date he took her rowing, and as he was helping her into the boat, the man who owned it yelled out, “Hey, you have to pay before you get in the boat.”
“Your dad let go of me and the boat,” Mom said, “and I fell into the water. Things got even worse after that…,” and everyone in the room was laughing. Dad was in a coma by then, but I knew he could still hear us, and at some level he was joining in the laughter. He looked so good that I thought he was going to postpone dying, but as soon as the last grandchild arrived he departed his body, leaving everyone with a feeling of wholeness and no fear of death.
I ask seniors to tell me how they can die laughing. Their answers relate to two accomplishments. One is their having completed what we are all here to do, which is to serve the world in our unique way rather than in a way determined by others. When people spend their lives doing what they love, laughter comes much easier at the end. The second accomplishment is their collection of stories about times in their life that may have been difficult, maddening, or embarrassing when they happened, but which elicit hoots of laughter now. Sometimes these stories come from their adult kids saying, “Dad, I was so embarrassed when you did that; I was trying to pretend you were some other kid’s father,” and they get to enjoy a hilarious family moment once again.
So remember, don’t be afraid to embarrass your family and give them material to use when you are ready to die — and die laughing at their stories. Like the time we couldn’t find one of our rescued exotic pets. I decided to call the police, in case anyone reported seeing it. Imagine calling the police to say you couldn’t find your kinkajou: “Your what?” “Yes, my kinkajou. He went missing.” When the kids heard me call the police the first time, they thought it was embarrassing enough, but when I called the next time, they heard me saying that I had found my kinkajou in the rafters of the house by walking around up there with a banana until he stuck his head out.
Name your dog Sex and your cats Hope and Miracle, as I have. See what happens when you run around the yard chasing Sex and shout to your wife that you don’t have Miracle and can’t get Sex, but at least you’ve got Hope. You’ll embarrass your kids with your childlike humor, but they will appreciate it later in life.
Our children come home and say, “Thanks, Dad.” When I ask why, they say they did something crazy at work or at school, and instead of people around them complaining or criticizing, those people say to each other, “Well, you know who his father is.”
Be a collector of funny events that happen, and make them into unforgettable memories by sharing them and writing them down. I often ask for Chinese food when I go to pick up my takeout order at Ernie’s Pizzeria. Pat, the owner, knows me and loves that I am nuts, but new waitresses don’t know what to do with me, as they try to explain I’m in the wrong restaurant. One night I walked in and asked for my Chinese food, and the waitress put out three containers of Chinese food; the whole restaurant burst into laughter. My behavior also kept our five kids from eating out with me and saved me a lot of money.
Terry Bruce wrote to me saying that sharing funny stories about her children helped to heal a difficult relationship with her mother.
Sometimes Mum drives me crazy, and I have a tendency to snap at her, which always leaves me feeling worse because we only get to visit each other every couple of years. One day I was already tired when she called, and I knew this could be a bad day to talk. But Mum started reminiscing about funny things my kids had done on her last trip over here, so I sat and listened.
She reminded me about the day we’d all gone blackberry picking. When we got back to the house, I poured all the berries into a bowl. My three-year-old daughter had picked two blackberries out of the bowl and put them into her mouth. “Izzy, don’t eat any more of those,” I said, “or there won’t be enough for dessert.” With a look of pure innocence on her face, Izzy replied, “I wasn’t eating them, Mummy. I was rinsing them.” Then she took the berries out of her mouth and placed them back in the bowl.
Mum and I laughed, and that story reminded me of things that my other children, Farley, Raffy, and Jesse, had done. Many were precious moments that Mum had missed seeing, but now as I shared them in graphic detail we were laughing again. By the time we hung up, I felt really close to her, as if she’d been here. And rather than driving each other crazy, we thoroughly enjoyed our call. That powerful sense of family and belonging gave me a boost for the rest of the day. All the things that I had been stressing about before suddenly seemed insignificant.
The world is filled with pain. The world is also a human comedy if we choose to see it that way. Yes, it is a tragic comedy at times, but you can still be a healer and spread joy through humor and laughter. Why do you think Shakespeare’s comedies are still so appealing more than four hundred years after he wrote them? It’s because people love to laugh. Something deep inside us knows it is good for us. After a funeral, go to the wake and watch how quickly people begin to share funny stories. Something inside them is saying it’s time to heal a little. So, have a laugh; heal the wounds of grief, and don’t put out your loved one’s celestial candle with your tears.
My friend Diane was having a family reunion with her sister and two brothers, and they fell into fits of laughter over stories of their stepmother’s thriftiness. “I couldn’t believe it that time I went to visit Mom and Dad,” Diane shared with her siblings, “and when I got up to go and use the bathroom, Mom said, ‘Don’t use the good toilet paper, dear. I save that for guests.’ ”
Her brother Bruce added, “Yeah, and after Dad died she announced she had something to give us. I was hoping it might be an envelope with a check in it or maybe something that had belonged to Dad, like his war medals. I nearly fell over when she reached into her purse and pulled out four ziplock freezer bags filled with ashes. ‘Here’s your dad,’ she said and gave him back to us.”
“Do you remember what you did?” asked Diane. “You held up your bag and asked Mom, ‘Which end of Dad did I get?’ ”
The ensuing laughter renewed family bonds and helped to heal old resentments. It is hard to hold a grudge when the root of the resentment produces such colorful stories to inspire hilarious fits of laughter.
Several years ago my wife came home from shopping and went into the bathroom. I went out to the car, brought in all the groceries and put them away. When she returned to the kitchen, I was expecting a big thank-you and much praise for what I had done. Instead she said, “You don’t put tomatoes in the refrigerator.” That hurt my feelings. No thank-you — just criticism. So I wrote a poem titled “Divorce.”
Tomatoes don’t belong in the refrigerator
I did it again
my wife may never forgive me
our marriage is on the rocks
I snore, put tomatoes in the fridge
and I walk and eat too fast
the divorce lawyer doesn’t know how
to help us reach a valid settlement
for my cruelty
he suggests we try to work it out
to give love a chance
and don’t put tomatoes in the fridge
I read his settlement to my wife
she laughs
I love her when she laughs
and forget the difficult times
we fire the lawyer
and take the tomatoes out of the fridge3
When I read this to Bobbie she laughed, and, just as the poem says, I love her when she laughs. I’ll also share a few things Bobbie warns people to look out for. She calls them “Bobbie’s Warning Signs”:
•You call your wife to say you’d like to have dinner out, and she leaves a sandwich on the front porch.
•You put your bra on backwards and it fits better.
•You call suicide prevention, and they put you on hold.
•You call the missing person’s bureau, and they tell you to get lost.
•The fortune-teller offers you a refund.
•You come home from the beauty parlor and your dog growls and won’t let you in the house.
•You open a fortune cookie and find a summons.
•The bird sitting outside your window is a vulture.
And here’s some wise marriage advice from my wife:
•Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
•Never argue with a woman when she is tired or rested.
•Next time your hubby is angry say, “You are so handsome when you are angry.”
Love her? You bet I love her.
For some people, laughter comes easy; for others, it takes practice, often owing to childhood experiences where laughter was not encouraged. Artists must practice their skill in order to explore, learn, and grow in the mastery of their craft, whether they are painting, writing, or doing any other form of creative expression. The key word here is expression. So I recommend that you practice the expression of giggles and guffaws; become an artist, and fill your palette with laughter. Remember it’s not healthy to be serious and normal. Trying to be normal is only for those who feel inadequate. So be an infectious carrier. Spread joy and healing, and keep the artist within you alive.